Little Oli (2009)

There's a obscenely fat man who by shuffling along on the stumps of his once extant feet drags his knackered wheelchair through the streets, usually backwards. I've helped him up curbs and into shop doorways a few times. Sitting on a bench late one night with my girlfriend in the churchyard behind St. Giles I noticed a rustling in the bushes amongst trees and shadows. We go to have a look to see what it is and, by now pretty freaked out, notice the stumpy wheelchair man shuffling hideously out of the shadows, grunting, in our direction. We made a sharp exit.

Camberwell is the edge of the world I want to live in, head west and you have Battersea and Chelsea and all the rest; north-west you have Kennington; south, Dulwich. Head east though, and you have Peckham, New Cross, Lewisham and Catford. Camberwell is middling, interesting enough to keep me here and not horrible enough to make me think about going anywhere else. Not yet.

I've lived here since moving to London. I celebrated my finals at university here, getting plastered, doing karaoke at the Silver buckle (mistake) and ended up supping vodka outside the golden grill at six o'clock in the morning. We've had the best parties at my house in Camberwell, trees decorated with detuned television sets, aquariums full of ice, the garden brought inside to turn the house into a jungle. Students round here expect good parties. I've seen jugglers on rooftops and bedroom raves on random evenings wondering round Camberwell.

And for the Camberwellian, no evening out in central or anywhere else needs to end wandering the streets for some unforthcoming resolution, for we have Bolu.

I think being sandwiched between two art colleges lends a virility and youth to the area and gives the more long term residents a feeling that something's happening. Friday night in midsummer Camberwell is possessed with energy, and yet so little of it is violent. It's not the prettiest area of London and is sandwiched by some fairly unseemly avenues but, for all that, I feel safe here.

Camberwell isn't that special, I just like it. My friends all live here and there's an unplaceable charm. It's central and yet not central, rough and ready and yet possessed with a certain refinement in places. Camberwell is a good place to live because people end up here by accident, and many who chance upon it, like me, find themselves choosing to stay.

But why is there no market or bookshop?